Franz Boas Papers

Mss.B.B61

Date: 1862-1942 | Size: 59 Linear feet

Special Request | On-site Photography Request
Collections Home | APS Home

Abstract

During the half century leading up to the Second World War, Franz Boas helped to define academic anthropology in the United States. Trained as a geographer at the University of Heidelberg, Boas worked initially on the Inuit of Baffin Island and subsequently on the cultures of the Indians of the Northwest Pacific Coast, becoming a leading figure in American anthropology by the first decade of the twentieth century. As Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, Boas made significant theoretical contributions to ethnology, linguistics, and physical anthropology, helping to ingrain the four fields approach in his discipline and introducing the concept of cultural relativism into wide currency. He was, as well, a committed Socialist and an ardent opponent of both racism and fascism.

This collection includes correspondence that Boas carried on with his colleagues in anthropology, as well as with those in the other social sciences and sciences. This correspondence is rich as a source for twentieth-century historians interested in "radical" social causes, since Boas was a socialist and an outspoken voice for progressive social causes.

Background note

Born in Minden, Germany, on July 8, 1858, the anthropologist Franz Boas was the son of the merchant Meier Boas and his wife, Sophie Meyer. Raised in the radical and tradition of German Judaism, Franz's youth was steeped in politically liberal beliefs and a largely secular outlook that he carried with him from university through his emigration to the United States.

At the universities of Heidelberg and Bonn, Boas studied physics and geography before completing a doctorate in physical geography at Kiel in 1881. Intending on testing then-current theories of environmental determinism, he signed on to an anthropological expedition to Baffin Island in 1883-1884, expecting that he would document the close adaptative fit of Central Eskimo cultures to their extreme climate. His experiences in the arctic, however, led him to the contrary conclusion: that social traditions, not environmental, exerted a dominant influence over human societies, and from this point onward, he was led to pursue the cultural over than physical dimensions of humanity.

Although he returned to Berlin after the expedition, Boas emigrated to the United States in 1885 to assume an editorial position with the journal Science, hoping to use it as a stepping-stone to an academic appointment. In 1886, he embarked upon a second major field excursion into what would become his most famous ethnographic project, working among the Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka'wakw) Indians of the Northwest Coast, after which he secured his first academic position in 1889, at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. After three years at Clark and a failed appointment at the Field Museum in Chicago in 1892 (during which he played a part in organizing the anthropological exhibits for the Columbian World's Fair), Boas moved to New York City.

The restless activity of Boas's early years slowed in New York. Hired by the American Museum of Natural History (1895-1905), which became the recipient of the amazingly rich anthropological collections he accumulated on the Northwest Coast, Boas began to teach classes at Columbia University in 1896, where three years later he was appointed Professor of Anthropology. For the next 37 years, Boas ruled the anthropological roost at Columbia, accruing unprecedented power in his discipline, wielding grants, recommendations, and appointments with remarkable dexterity, and collecting about him a remarkable group of younger scholars as students and colleagues.

Distancing himself from some of the main currents of contemporary anthropological thought in the United States, and particularly from the evolutionist assumptions that riddled the discipline, Boas championed an anthropology that viewed human cultures as shaped more by historical "tradition" than biological propensity. Claiming to resist any overarching, synthetic theories of human relations, and particularly evolutionary theories of sociocultural development, Boas laid the theoretical groundwork for what became modern cultural relativism. In the process, he helped to clarify the demarcation between the concepts of culture and race and its expression in the divergence of the four fields in anthropology -- linguistics, ethnography, physical anthropology, and archaeology.

Boas's relatively few forays into physical anthropology included a pioneering anthropometric study in 1910-1911, demonstrating that the alleged mental and physical inferiority of immigrants disappeared statistically by the second generation. Opposed to immigration quotas and disdainful of the claims to science used to justify them, Boas was a consistent, strident opponent of racial determinism in intellect or behavior. A committed, politically active Socialist, he was frequently an outspoken critic of American policy. During the First World War, he spoke out against the treatment of German Americans and "enemy aliens" -- to the point of putting himself at risk -- and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany proved an even greater crusade. Despite his age, Boas took an active role in the anti-fascist struggle in the United States and was involved with numerous committees to assist refugee scholars. He was equally ardent in his efforts to criticize racial and ethnic bigotry in the United States.

As a mentor, Boas had a reputation of being directive, at times overbearing, and at the same time of doing too little to prepare his students for the rigors of fieldwork. The extraordinary number of students coming out of Columbia under his care, however, has arguably done as much to extend the Boasian approach than Boas's own writing. Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Elsie Clews Parsons, Alfred Kroeber, Frank Speck, Edward Sapir, Zora Neale Hurston, Ella Deloria, Melville Herskovits, Leslie Spier, Paul Radin, and Ashley Montagu are all students of Boas. Many continued in the same intellectual stream, some diverged, yet all bore traces of Boas's influence. He left a mark as well on the institutions of the discipline, as one of the founders of the American Anthropological Association and of the International Journal of American Linguistics.

Scope and content

The Boas Collections at the APS are the key resource for documenting the transformations in American ethnography, linguistics, and physical anthropology in the period between the 1880s and 1940s. The Boas Papers (Mss B B61) consist of the main body of Franz Boas's professional correspondence, including particularly extensive and important correspondence with Edward Sapir, Gladys Reichard, Elsie Parsons, Leo Frachtenburg, John Alden Mason, M. J. McGee, Frederick W. Hodge, Alfred Kroeber, George Hunt, and Alfred M. Tozzer, and material relating to Boas's involvement in professional and other organizations. This collection provides richly detailed coverage of every facet of Boas's career from the time of his emigration to America in the mid-1880s until his death in 1940, shedding light on the development of ethnography, anthropological linguistics, and anthropological approaches to archaeology. His correspondence was highly diverse, including not only his fellow anthropologists, but geneticists, evolutionary biologists, social scientists, and social activists.

The Boas collections are also a rich resource for historians interested in "radical" social causes in the twentieth-century through Boas's participation in socialist political circles and progressive social movements. There is significant material on the Germanistic Society of America and for German National Socialism and the expulsion of European scholars, as well as the efforts to reestablish them in British and American institutions.

This collection also contains photographs of Boas and members of his family from his childhood to the time of his death. Links to the digital versions of the pages are included in the inventory. You may also view a gallery of all images here.

Native American Images note : Nearly 3,000 sketches, albumen prints, black and white silver gelatin photographs, photomechanical prints, postcards, and maps of Baffinland Inuit and Northwest Coast Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka'wakw). Taken and drawn by Boas during his Northern Canadian expeditions of 1883-84 and 1886, images include native clothing, dwellings, totem figures, tools and kayaks. Of note, hand-drawn maps of Inuit tribal territories. Includes images sent to Boas from anthropologist John Alden Mason (Mayan), Amelia Susman and William Beynon (Tsimshian) of sculptures, carvings, and totems. Sketches are in the correspondence and field notebook series of B B61; B B61p; B B61.ru; B B61.5. The finding aid contains an inventory of all photographs housed in the Photograph Collection and on Film 1427. See also the American Council of Learned Society papers (497.3 B63c) for more Native American images by Boas.

Digital objects note

This collection contains digital materials that are available in the APS Digital Library. Links to these materials are provided with context in the inventory of this finding aid. A general listing of digital objects may also be found here.

Collection Information

Physical description

59 lin. feet

Provenance

Gift of Helene Boas Yampolsky, 1961-1962; and Dr. Cecil Yampolsky, 1964, with many later additions from Norman F. Boas.

Preferred citation

Cite as: Franz Boas Papers, American Philosophical Society.

Alternate formats available

This collection has been microfilmed (film 1308) in chronological order.

Reel 1	February 24, 1878-January 31, 1889
Reel 2	February 1, 1889-April 30, 1894
Reel 3	May 1, 1894-December 30, 1898
Reel 4	January 5, 1899-March 26, 1903
Reel 5	April 2, 1903-December 30, 1904
Reel 6	January 2, 1905-January 24, 1906
Reel 7	January 24, 1906-January 4, 1907
Reel 8	January 4, 1907 -December 10, 1907
Reel 9	December 11, 1907-December 4, 1908
Reel 10	December 5, 1908-November 30, 1909
Reel 11	December 1, 1909-February 17, 1911
Reel 12	February 17, 1911-September 12, 1912
Reel 13	September 13, 1912-June 14, 1913
Reel 14	June 11, 1913-February 20, 1914
Reel 15	February 20, 1914-April 16, 1915
Reel 16	April 16, 1915-October 15, 1916
Reel 17	October 16, 1916-May 31, 1917
Reel 18	June 1, 1917-March 31, 1918
Reel 19	April 1, 1918-April 2, 1919
Reel 20	April 3, 1919-February 19, 1920
Reel 21	February 19, 1920-July 31, 1920
Reel 22	August 1, 1920-November 26, 1920
Reel 23	November 26, 1920-December 29, 1922
Reel 24	January 9, 1923-February 29, 1924
Reel 25	March 1, 1924-April 13, 1925
Reel 26	April 13, 1925-April 12, 1926
Reel 27	April 13, 1926-March 21, 1927
Reel 28	April 4, 1927-January 16, 1928
Reel 29	January 17, 1928-January 14, 1929
Reel 30	January 15, 1929-October 29, 1929
Reel 31	November 1, 1929-September 15, 1930
Reel 32	September 16, 1930-May 11, 1931
Reel 33	May 12, 1931-January 15, 1932
Reel 34	January 16, 1932-February 27, 1933
Reel 35	March 7, 1933-November 6, 1933
Reel 36	November 7, 1933-August 10, 1934
Reel 37	August 11, 1934-September 6, 1935
Reel 38	September 8, 1935-June 14, 1936
Reel 39	June 15, 1936-April 23, 1937
Reel 40	April 24, 1937-March 7, 1938
Reel 41	March 8, 1938-February 18, 1939
Reel 42	February 19, 1939-January 11, 1940
Reel 43	January 12, 1940-February 10, 1941
Reel 44	February 10, 1941-May 3, 1943

Other finding aids

This collection is thoroughly inventoried in Franziska Boas, Guide to the Microfilm Collection of the Professional Papers of Franz Boas (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1972), 2 vols. This guide forms the basis of the inventory below.

Materials relating to Boas' research on American Indians is indexed in great detail in the online Daythal Kendall Guide to Native American Collections at the American Philosophical Society.

Separated material

Photographs have been separated for storage with the library's photographic collection.

Related material

The American Council of Learned Societies Committee on Native American Languages, Franz Boas Collection of Materials for American Linguistics (Mss 497.3.B63c) is a large collection of primary materials on Native American languages assembled, in part, under Boas's supervision, and including a large quantity of material written by Boas himself.

Boas appears as a correspondent in numerous APS collections, and in addition to its rich collections for the history of anthropology, the library houses the papers of several of Boas's former students and proteges, including Frank Speck (Mss. Ms. Coll. 126), Elsie Clews Parsons (Mss. Ms. Coll. 29), John Alden Mason (Mss. B M384), Paul Radin (Mss. 497.3 R114), and Ashley Montagu (Mss. Ms. Coll. 109).

The APS also houses a microfilm (372.3, reel 1) of original materials in the Office of Anthropology Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., relating to Boas's trips to Baffin Island (N.W.T.) and British Columbia, during which he studied and collected cultural materials, 1885-1909.

The papers of Boas's son Ernst Boas (Mss. Ms. Coll. 10) are housed at the APS. A physician, Ernst Boas shared his father's liberal political outlook and activist social views.

Other Franz Boas Collections

	Franz Boas Professional Papers, ca. 1860-1942 (Mss B B61p)	View Collection
	Boas Family Papers, 1862-1942 (Mss B B61f)	View Collection
	Boas-Rukeyser Collection, 1869-1940 (Mss B B61ru)	View Collection
	Franz Boas field notebooks and anthropometric data, ca. 1883-1912 (Mss B B61.5)	View Collection

Bibliography

Rohner, Ronald P., ed., The Ethnography of Franz Boas: Letters and Diaries of Franz Boas, Written on the Northwest Coast from 1886 to 1931 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1969). Call no.: B B61e.r

Stocking, George, ed., The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911: A Franz Boas Reader (N.Y.: Basic Books, 1974). Call no.: 572.081 B63s

Cole, Douglas, Franz Boas: The Early Years, 1859-1906 (Seattle: Univ. of Washington, 1999).

Boas, Franz, The Mind of Primitive Man (N.Y.: MacMillan, 1911). Call no.: 572 B63m

Boas, Franz, Ethnology of the Kwakiutl (Washington, D.C.:Government Printing Office, 1921). Call no.: 572.97 B63e

Boas, Franz, Primitive Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1927). Call no.: 571.7 B63p

Boas, Franz, ed., General Anthropology (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1938). Call no.: 572 B63g.r

Boas, Franz, Race, Language and Culture (N.Y.: MacMillan, 1940). Call no.: 572.081 B63r

African American History Note

This collection has the potential to be rich for students of attitudes toward race in the United States. Among the many topics covered are the study and teaching of anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, progressive social causes, and the expulsion of European scholars under German national socialism.

Physiology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics Note

Author	Format	Date	Language
Levene, P. A. (Phoebus Aaron), 1869-1940	Correspondence (3 items)	1921	English
Loeb, Jacques, 1859-1924	Correspondence (5 items)	1920	English

Indexing Terms

Corporate Name(s)

Germanistic Society of America

Genre(s)

Albumen prints
Cabinet cards
Gelatin silver prints
Maps
Negatives
Photomechanical prints
Postcards
Sketches.

Occupation(s)

Anthropologists -- United States.

Personal Name(s)

Andrews, H. A.
Beckwith, Martha Warren, 1871-1959
Boas, Ernst P. (Ernst Philip), 1891-1955
Boas, Franz, 1858-1942
Boas, Franz, 1858-1942
Bogoras, Waldemar, 1865-1936
Bowditch, Charles P. (Charles Pickering), 1842-1921
Britton, Nathaniel Lord, 1859-1934
Bumpus, Hermon Carey, 1862-1943
Butler, Nicholas Murray, 1862-1947
Cattell, James McKeen, 1860-1944
Chávez, Ezequiel Adeodato, 1868-1946
Crane, M. E.
Dixon , Roland Burrage, 1875-1934
Engerrand, George C., 1877-1961
Fackenthal, Frank Diehl, 1883-1968
Franchtenberg, Leo Joachim, 1883-1930
Gordon, George Byron, 1911-
Heye, George G. (George Gustav), 1874-1957
Hodge, Frederick Webb, 1864-1956
Holmes, William Henry, 1846-1933
Hrdlicka, Ales, 1869-1943
Jochelson, Waldemar, 1855-1937
Keppel, Frederick P. (Frederick Paul), 1875-1943
Kroeber, A. L. (Alfred Louis), 1876-1960
Laufer , Berthold, 1874-1934
McGee, W. J., 1853-1912
Michelson, Truman, 1879-1938
Parsons, Elsie Worthington Clews, 1875-1941
Radin, Paul, 1883-1959
Sapir, Edward, 1884-1939
Sargent, H. E.
Seler, Eduard
Steinen, Karl von den, 1855-1929
Swanton, John Reed, 1873-1958
Teit, James Alexander, 1864-1922
Tozzer, Alfred M. -- (Alfred Marston), -- 1877-1954.
Wissler, Clark, 1870-1947
Woodbridge, Frederick James Eugene, 1867-1940

Subject(s)

Anthropology -- Research -- United States
Anthropology -- United States -- History.
Anthropology -- United States.
Anthropology, ethnography, fieldwork
Arctic Indians
Ethnology -- North America
Indians of North America -- British Columbia
Indians of North America -- Ethnology
Indians of North America -- Languages
Indians of North America -- Northwest Coast
Indians of North America -- Nunavut
Inuit
Jewish scientists
Kwakiutl Indians
Northwest Coast Indians
Race, race relations, racism
Refugees, Political
Scientists, Refugee
Social conditions, social advocacy, social reform
Socialists -- United States
Tlingit Indians

Collection overview

Series I. Correspondence

1862-1942

59 linear feet

Request Series for Reading Room Access

Request a Copy of this Series

Letters to Franz Boas, copies of his replies, and related papers. The collection includes family papers, diaries, and personal correspondence, but the majority of the items are professional letters pertaining to the following subjects: the development of anthropology in America as both a science and a profession; the founding and later activities of the International School of American Archaeology and Ethnology in Mexico; international meetings of anthropologists; the study of American Indian linguistics; the study of physical anthropology and of race; field work of students. The papers also deal with the advancement of science, academic freedom, and public and political activities of Boas.

Due to the size of the collection, the content for Series I has been divided into multiple inventories. Please follow the links below to browse the contents.

View correspondents beginning with:

Correspondents E-G

Correspondents H

Correspondents I-K

Correspondents L

Correspondents M

Correspondents N-Q

Correspondents R

Correspondents S

Correspondents T-V

Correspondents W-Z

Series II. Photographs

1869-1940

Request Series for Reading Room Access

Request a Copy of this Series

Microfilm

Request Series for Reading Room Access

Request a Copy of this Series

Detailed Inventory

Series I. Correspondence

1862-1942

59 linear feet

Request Series for Reading Room Access

Request a Copy of this Series

Due to the size of the collection, the content for Series I has been divided into multiple inventories. Please follow the links below to browse the contents.

View correspondents beginning with:

Correspondents E-G

Correspondents H

Correspondents I-K

Correspondents L

Correspondents M

Correspondents N-Q

Correspondents R